This Committee was charged with addressing Washington University students’ communication skills as the hallmark of a Washington University education. Thus, much of the Committee’s focus was on developing strategies or contexts that will provide Washington University students with the tools they need to communicate effectively. The Committee’s conclusions and recommendations are designed to strengthen communication skills over all, and to meet the needs of students who may have deficiencies in communication skills, based on an effective and early first experience and a continuous reinforcement of those skills throughout each student’s Washington University education. Our conclusions and recommendations follow:

EComp-100 Retains a Pivotal Role. The pivotal role in the undergraduate curriculum and the special characteristics of the one-semester freshman English composition course (EComp-100) at Washington University indicate that, with rare exceptions, students should be required to take the course here. The Committee believes that EComp-100 should remain a standardized formal course that is clearly focused on the mechanics of writing.

Reinforce Communication Skills throughout the Curriculum. Effective written and oral communications needs to be reinforced throughout each student’s education at Washington University and integrated into the curriculum. One possibility would be to institute a minimum requirement for two or three communication-intensive courses beyond the current freshman English composition requirement. The Committee believes that each division of the University should continue to design its own communication-intensive courses, geared toward the career objectives of its graduates.

Writing Fellows Program. The Committee recommends implementation of a program to train and use advanced undergraduates from all divisions of the University as tutors within a broader Writing Fellows Program. This program would serve as the source of undergraduate tutors to allow the creation and designation of communication-intensive courses throughout all five undergraduate divisions of the university.

Accelerated ESL Program. The Committee also considered issues of written and oral communication in English for the increasing proportion of the undergraduate student population for whom English is not the first language. Overall, the Committee concluded that by the fall semester of an international student’s sophomore year at Washington University, he or she should achieve a level of written and spoken expertise in English that would permit him or her to be a full participant in the intellectual and social life of the University. To accomplish this goal for all students, it may be necessary to accelerate the process for some.

Options for Oral Communication Skills. While the Committee is unanimous in supporting the need to develop oral communication skills, it is not clear that the burden for such training could be assumed by all communication-intensive courses. Not only is the incorporation of oral presentation skills into the curriculum difficult, but student presentations also consume a great deal of class time.

Required Resources and Incentives for Communication-Intensive Courses. There is a pedagogical incentive to teach communication-intensive courses in all divisions of the University. Many faculty members would strongly prefer to teach courses with a significant writing component. In large classes, the numbers of students are too large and the instructional support may be too low to have assignments in which criticism of the oral and written form, including opportunities to revise and resubmit assignments, is an integral part. "Certified" communication-intensive courses should typically be assigned a teaching assistant. We see the Writing Fellows Program as a likely source of qualified undergraduate teaching assistants.

This document presents a report of the conclusions and recommendations of the Committee on Written and Spoken English, co-chaired by Professors Stuart Sherman (English) and Bill Darby (Engineering), during the 1997-98 academic year. Faculty members of the Committee are Professors Russell Coff (Business) Douglas Dowd (Art), Carl Safe (Architecture), Harriet Stone (Romance Languages), Bob Wiltenburg (English), and Vicky Witte (Library). Student members of the Committee are Rebecca Price (Engineering) and Kim Wardwell (Business). Ms. Price replaced David Saff, an engineering student who served on the Committee during the fall semester and earned his degree in December 1997. Ms Wardwell earned her degree in May 1998.

This Committee was charged to address Washington University students’ communication skills as the hallmark of a Washington University education. Thus, much of the Committee’s focus was on developing strategies or contexts that will provide students with the tools they need to be good communicators.

Based on reports from the professional schools, especially business and engineering, it appears that writing and presentation skills are being effectively addressed there in the career context for upper-level students. For students in the College of Arts and Sciences, "freshman composition" (EComp-100, Expository Writing) and the Writing Center seem to be working well. Nonetheless, two questions were especially relevant for this Committee:

How can we lay the strongest possible foundation as early as possible for writing and presentation skills among all Washington University undergraduate students?

How can we continue to reinforce and integrate writing and presentation skills throughout each student’s undergraduate experience at Washington University?

Our conclusions and recommendations focus on a three-pronged approach:

to meet the needs of students with critical deficiencies in communication skills;

to strengthen communication skills over all, based on an effective and early first experience and a continuous reinforcement of those skills throughout each student’s Washington University education;

to provide a "Writing Fellows Program" or an honors program which expands opportunities for students with outstanding abilities and recognizes their achievements, while also increasing the University’s ability to offer communications-intensive courses in all divisions.

The basic premise for EComp-100 is that the best method for a first college experience in writing is to have a teacher who knows and loves good writing, who is articulate and patient with students, to work intensively with a small group as they learn to read, write, criticize, and revise with increasing mastery. The course is taught in sections of a dozen. Students read substantial, well-written books in the categories of autobiography, nature and science, history and society, and humanities; they write fresh papers or revisions every week or ten days; they receive extensive criticism on the page, in conferences, and in peer workshops. The teaching is done by advanced graduate students who are carefully selected, trained, and supervised. Most of them are third-year and beyond, and most from English, with a sprinkling from other departments. Central and recurrent concerns are the construction of coherent arguments in students’ writing, and the development of powers of rhetorical and critical analysis in their reading and revising.

We noted the potential danger in equating good writing with good thinking in developing courses. When that occurs, attention and effort inevitably tilt toward thinking and writing gets short shrift. There is an implied assumption that if one only gets the thinking right, good writing will automatically follow. In the case of EComp-100, which focuses on written communication, we considered the "writing as carpentry" concept.

Teaching writing is, in this instance, similar to teaching drawing where the focus is on technique rather than content. The instructor often provides the content (an object for a still life, perhaps) which the students use to demonstrate their drawing skills. One example from the School of Art is an assignment that requires design students to make 100 drawings of the same object. The students are taught to focus on the process of drawing and not on the object.

While no analogy is perfect, we believe that the still-life approach could apply to teaching structured writing. The issue of the item to draw as an example of good or bad drawing does not occur. In asking students to read a text selection and respond to it in writing, serious consideration should be given to the use of the piece as an example or inspiration for the students, as is currently done in EComp-100.

A significant concern is that it is typically very difficult to make a nuts-and-bolts course interesting. It may be unrealistic to expect an instructor who is a typical third-year graduate student to be able to do this for freshmen. We recognize the benefits of having some form of FOCUS-type universal freshman seminar that includes a strong emphasis on argument and rhetoric. Nonetheless, we believe it should not result in a refocused EComp-100, in which the nuts-and-bolts of good writing becomes a secondary consideration to the topic about which the students write. The Committee believes that EComp-100 should remain a standardized formal course that is clearly focused on the mechanics of writing.

It is unusual in a university like Washington University for the basics of English composition to extend through only one semester. The decision to rely on a one-semester course was based on the trade-off that the classes could be kept small. No first-year course is enough -- students will need a booster. The effective use of written and oral communications needs to be reinforced for the remaining three years of a Washington University education and integrated throughout the student’s curriculum. However, an advanced composition requirement does not appear to be an attractive or feasible recommendation.

We identified a few alternatives and supplements to small sections of a nuts-and-bolts EComp-100 course that may be worth considering. These include:

Cover writing skills topics in large lectures with smaller discussion sections for students to receive the same individual attention they do now in the current configuration of EComp-100 with class sizes of twelve.

Offer a sequence of lectures and labs for undergraduates every semester on major elements of writing.

Offer an elective "EComp Lecture Series," for example, a six-week colloquium on form for freshmen.

We considered recommending that EComp courses and, in fact, all writing-intensive courses include oral communication components. We may need a separate set of courses in oratory, even beginning in freshman year. Another possibility is, of course, a separate required course in oratory, comparable to EComp-100.

The pivotal role in the undergraduate curriculum and the special characteristics of the one-semester introductory English composition course at Washington University indicate that, with rare exceptions, students should be required to take the course at Washington University, as opposed to meeting the requirement by taking a comparable course at another institution and transferring it to the student’s Washington University curriculum.

The Committee believes that the University should stress writing and oral communication in the sophomore, junior, and senior years as a reinforcement and integration of these skills throughout the Washington University curriculum. Unfortunately, usage statistics provided by the Writing Center show low demand for tutoring assistance in the sophomore and junior years, presumably indicating students are not faced with significant writing requirements during these two years. During these years, a variety of formats could foster improvements in written and oral communication. On the other hand, usage statistics show an increased demand for help in the senior year, presumably as students are preparing résumés for following employment opportunities or applications to graduate school.

Currently, the Department of English offers a number of advanced composition courses. Unfortunately, none of these deals specifically with oral communication. One possibility would be to institute a minimum requirement for two or three communication-intensive courses beyond the current English composition requirement. One such course would be in the student’s major; the other(s) would be in an area outside the major. Achieving this could lead to a revision in the requirements stated for both first and second majors throughout the University. Naturally, the Committee would encourage students to go beyond the minimum requirement and to integrate and develop communications skills throughout their undergraduate curriculum.

The strict constructionist’s definition of "communication-intensive" is elusive, and can probably not be finalized independently of the results of the Bowen Commission and a clarification of the University’s overall priorities. Nonetheless, we consider the characteristics of such a course to include a significant opportunity to receive detailed constructive criticism in response to assignments with an opportunity to revise and resubmit, along with a significant portion of the grade reflecting the form the student chose to communicate the content.

A second proposal is to implement a program to train and use advanced undergraduates from all divisions of the University as tutors within a broader Writing Fellows Program. This program could be a natural outgrowth and development of the current Howard Nemerov Writing Scholars Program, which provides six merit scholarships and $3,000 stipends to entering freshmen in the College of Arts and Sciences and is not restricted to English majors. This program would serve as the source of undergraduate tutors to allow the creation and designation of communication-intensive courses (described below) throughout all five undergraduate divisions of the university.

The Committee heard a report from Doreen Salli of the Writing Center, who is currently involved in developing a Writing Scholars program. This program would train students (initially six freshmen, who would participate in the program throughout their four years at Washington University) to assist other students.

Such a program could carry honors potential, or some other designation to recognize the accomplishments of the tutors, if the program were extended to cover achieving excellence as a student in a certain number of designated communication-intensive courses as well as the student’s experience as a writing tutor. Just as we currently recognize a minor, the University could provide a special designation, for example, "Writing Fellow," or "Honors Program in Writing," perhaps as an extension of the Nemerov Writing Scholars Program, on the transcript of students who complete this program. Alternately, the University could award a certificate for Writing Fellows.

A third option is to have a cluster of courses organized around a specific theme that would be communication-intensive. The Committee proposes that students take such a cluster of courses throughout the curriculum, at least in the junior year, so as to maintain the focus on writing as the student advances through the curriculum (rather than restrict this experience to freshman programs such as Text and Tradition, Hewlett, etc.)

The Committee believes that each school of the University should continue to design its own intensive-writing courses. Excellent courses now exist in the business school and in the engineering school (taught by Professor Jim Ballard and his colleagues). In the College of Arts and Sciences, students in all divisions of the University are likely to take communication-intensive courses as humanities distribution courses. Fewer than half of Art and Sciences graduates currently go directly to graduate school. Persuading Arts and Sciences majors that their future career opportunities will benefit from communication-intensive courses geared toward their professional goals will also be critical. One basis for gaining such support from students would be to find out from the Career Center what paths are often followed by graduates of the College of Arts and Sciences and to design communication-intensive courses appropriate to those career choices.

Because students in all five divisions of the University take a significant number of courses in the College of Arts and Sciences, the Committee suggests that the College also designate courses throughout the curriculum as intensive-writing courses in order to insure that sophomores, juniors, and seniors in all divisions of the University have an opportunity to continue perfecting their writing skills outside the context of their professional education. These courses may also include a component of oral presentation (see section on Oral Communication, below).

The Committee favors the idea of the institution of a series of lectures, or clinics, for students at all levels, devoted to the craft of writing, and in particular to the "nuts and bolts" aspects of writing, such as sentence structure, paragraph structure, parallel structure, etc. This series could serve as a common ground for improving the mechanics of communication in thematic clusters of communication-intensive courses.

The Committee notes that even if all of the above suggestions were implemented, the majority of the courses in the curriculum would not be communication-intensive. Following a model used at Brown University, faculty in all courses could assist with the writing program if Washington University were to institute this rather simple procedure for evaluating students’ writing in these courses:

All faculty members are called upon to evaluate the quality of students’ writing each semester, making a note of any student whose work in this area is unsatisfactory. When the faculty member submits final grades for the course, he or she also places a check in a box marked "writing" on the grade sheet for any student whose writing presented serious difficulties. A student who received two or more such checks for inadequate writing skills would be required to seek help, outside the limits of the course. For example, at Washington University, such a student might be required to report to the Writing Center or to the Director of Expository Writing.

Each communication-intensive course would then be assigned an undergraduate tutor, who would serve as an initial reader (not a grader) for the students’ work. At Brown University, the students submit to the professor the original draft, the revision, and the tutor’s comments. This process thus involves a certain amount of teamwork.

At Brown the person coordinating this program (here, Dr. Amy Pawl would be the likely coordinator) sends a letter to faculty members each year at the start of the term to explain how this evaluation of the students’ writing works, and to provide details regarding the support system in place for students whom two faculty members designate as having inadequate writing skills. One additional benefit of this program is that more faculty members would become engaged in the University’s commitment to improve, and more faculty members would become sensitive to the quality of students’ writing.

The Committee recognizes that it will be important to determine what will be required for the Writing Center to handle the additional students likely to be referred to it under this program.

The Committee also realized that an important consideration is issues of written and oral communication in English for the increasing proportion of the undergraduate student population for whom English is not the first language. That theme recurred throughout presentations from the professional schools, from the Freshman Composition Program, from the Writing Center, and from the staff teaching English as a Second Language.

The Committee learned from Ms. Wendy Hyman-Fite of the English as a Second Language (ESL) Program that serves non-native English speakers, including both graduate students and undergraduates:

Enrollment in ESL courses has tripled since 1990-91.

The number of international students on campus has increased by 25 percent since 1990.

Approximately 10 percent of Hilltop students are international.

The ESL Program at Washington University works with nearly all international undergraduate students. With graduate students, participation depends on the department.

The sequence of courses for ESL students often takes four semesters: ESL-1311 and 1411, with a focus on grammar and rhetoric, then EComp-1001, then EComp-100. Many international students come from American high schools that use the "whole language" approach, which is generally not sufficient to prepare students for college work. An oral presentation course is not required for international students, but about three to four percent choose to take it. Students receive no credit toward graduation for speaking courses, but they do receive credit for writing courses.

International students make appointments with tutors to go over their EComp assignments and other written papers. ESL Students are encouraged to go to the Writing Center. Usually the EComp instructor is informed of the help the student is receiving and it is often the instructor who referred the student to the ESL Program.

This sequence of four semester-long courses can inhibit international students’ exploration of the total university. Overall, the Committee concluded that by the fall semester of an international student’s sophomore year at Washington University, he or she should achieve a level of written and spoken expertise in English that would permit him or her to be a full participant in the intellectual and social life of the University.

To accomplish this goal for all students, it may be necessary to accelerate the process for some. There are a number of possibilities: for example, by compressing the four courses into three semesters or by taking six semester hours of ESL per semester. One possibility is to increase the frequency of class meetings in each course. Intensifying the social interaction among international students and those who are U.S. citizens should be strongly encouraged, as well as participation in social programs with alumni and alumnae in the area. Even so, any acceleration or collapsing of the sequence would need to be done carefully to be certain that the goal of achieving excellence in English communication is not compromised for our international students.

Other issues the Committee considered were:

Mainstream ESL students in EComp-100 but require them to do a simultaneous tutorial in ESL with someone closely linked to the EComp section.

Require a six-week (or similar length) institute in the summer before the student’s first year at the University.

Administer assessment examinations at various levels in the ESL sequence to determine who could transfer to the sequence of EComp courses.

Require an intensive summer course if a student has not achieved certain expected levels as he or she progresses through the undergraduate experience.

While the Committee is unanimous in supporting the need to develop oral communication, it is not clear that the burden for such training could be assumed by all communication-intensive courses. Not only is the incorporation of oral presentation skills into the curriculum difficult, but student presentations also consume a great deal of class time. Moreover, inexperienced students may also prove boring or ineffective speakers.

Debate teams, a course on oratory, videotaped and critiqued class presentations are all venues for developing the quality of the student’s spoken English. The Performing Arts Department and University College offer courses in public speaking. Most students, however, are not aware of these options, and these courses are not a good match with the needs and interests of most students. A course housed in the English Department may attract a broader base of students.

To support courses in oral communications it would be important to persuade students that their future career opportunities will also benefit from them. There are very few professions or businesses today that do not depend on the speaking abilities of their employees, be it in the form of comments before a judge or Committee, presentations to clients, or collaborative work with colleagues.

As in the overall development of communications-intensive courses, we recommend giving strong consideration to what students are likely to be doing after graduation and orienting oral communication courses to support the likely career objectives of students, as in done in the schools of business and engineering.

There is a pedagogical incentive to teach communication-intensive courses in all divisions of the University. Many faculty members would strongly prefer to teach courses with a significant writing component. However, communication-intensive courses are resource-intensive for faculty. The Committee has identified several measures to encourage faculty participation in teaching communication-intensive courses. For example:

Class size is a growing problem and some classes have significantly increased in size in the last few years. In large classes, the numbers of students are too large and the instructional support may be too low to have assignments in which criticism of the oral and written form, including opportunities to revise and resubmit assignments, is an integral part. Accomplishing this goal may require undergraduate divisions at Washington University to limit the size of classes more strictly than current practice. However, limiting the size of classes taught by teachers experienced and able to provide outstanding instruction in that environment to enable more writing assignments limits the number of students who can benefit from such excellent teachers. Thus, providing additional teaching assistant support may be necessary to allow excellent instruction and the development of communication skills to co-exist peacefully and synergistically in relatively large classes.

Dean Jim McLeod reported that out of approximately 1,800 undergraduate courses at Washington University, 1,000 had fewer than 10 students. An even greater number of smaller classes may be needed to deal effectively with the challenge of teaching communications skills to our students.

"Certified" communication-intensive courses should typically be assigned a teaching assistant. We see the Writing Fellows Program as a likely source of qualified undergraduates.

For both small and large classes, there should be some way to balance class size with extent of writing intensity. Perhaps communication-intensive courses could be weighted more highly than non-communication-intensive courses, counting as 1.3 or 1.5 when calculating a faculty member’s course load.

We will need to consult with leaders in all schools if we plan to recommend that every undergraduate be required to take some number of communication-intensive courses during their undergraduate experience at Washington University. Undergraduates in some disciplines may tend to see critical thinking as interfering with creativity, although they may need practice in making clearly thought-out presentations and preparing clearly organized and persuasive written documents.